Effective Marketing Tips to Boost Your Decaf Coffee Sales

Susan Castle is the Director of Marketing, Strategy & Development at The Bean Alliance, which sells Swiss Water decaf coffee under the brand Bean Ground & Drunk in large Australian supermarket chains (including Woolworths and Coles) as well as small specialty stores. As she tells us, their single origin organic and Fairtrade decaf coffee “is in every supermarket store in Australia”.

But not so long ago, they changed their marketing approach. “We were recently informed by Swiss Water… that there is an emerging coffee audience for their product, which is people between 20 and 25 who were previously energy drink consumers but realised that having energy drinks isn’t as good for your body as perhaps decaf coffee is. They were transitioning from energy drinks to coffee, and then from caffeinated coffee to decaf coffee, depending on the amount of caffeine they consume per day.”

This audience, she continues, “is quite sizeable. In Australia, for example, that market segment from 18 to 30 represents about a quarter of our population.”

This led them to do more research into what younger coffee consumers are looking for – something that, in turn, transformed their marketing. They aligned themselves with the specialty coffee movement, as well as with what Susan describes as “the global trend towards organic, towards health and awareness around our bodies, and what we are putting into our bodies”.

And was this approach effective? Yes, she tells me, in conjunction with other techniques, it proved successful for the Australian brand.

Data-based marketing works – so make sure you understand who’s purchasing your decaf coffee, who might be tempted to purchase it, and what they’re looking for.